"The Gremlin!" Gilbert breathed.
"Maybe," I said, "but I think he's getting expert advice." The fight dimmed and faded, and another picture grew in its place. A peasant, wearing a green tunic with yellow hose and a tall cap, was going from door to door, looking very confused as he scooped gold pieces out of a bag and handed them to the peasants. The recipients stared, unbelieving, then broke into huge smiles and heaped thanks on the donor-but he was already turning away toward the next cottage, looking very frazzled.
"He is a tax collector." Gilbert frowned. "Wherefore does he give money, rather than take it?"
It almost seemed as if the pool had heard him; it clouded up, then cleared again, showing us a view of a big room. We were looking at it from high up on the wall, and we saw a mob of men in rich-looking robes milling about half a dozen tables with checkerboard tops. There was a lot of gesturing, and I could imagine the noise. It looked like one of those television news shots of the New York Stock Exchange just before closing time on a bad day.
" 'Tis the exchequer," Friar Ignatius murmured. Oh. So that was where the word "checker" came from. Now that he mentioned it, I could see colored disks on some of the checkerboards, like beads on an abacus, and serving the same purpose. This was a counting room, and these men were clerks. "What are they arguing about?"
I shouldn't really have asked; I knew the answer as soon as I'd thought of the question. They were blaming one another, of course, trying to pass the buck before one of them got caught with it. The pool seemed to have heard me, though - as if in answer, it magnified the big desk in the center of the room, the one without a checkerboard, where a man with a gold chain around his neck was scribbling furiously on slips of parchment and handing them to the nearest of a group of boys, who twisted their way between furiously arguing clerks to hand the slips to men who were still sitting at their counting tables, moving stones about frantically, trying to look busy. As one boy carried his parchment, it swelled till it filled the pool, and we could all read, "Take two pennies from each peasant." But even as we watched, the words "Take" and "from" were blurring, the pen strokes writhing into new forms that made the message say, "Pay two pennies to each peasant."
"What spell is this?" Frisson stared, amazed.
"The Gremlin again," I said, "though I think he might be getting some advice from the Rat Raiser."
The scene rippled and disappeared, and another one steadied in it, place. This one looked a lot like the first, except that the tables didn't have checkerboards inlaid into them, and the men milling about wore richer and more colorful clothing-mostly doublet and hose; I only saw one or two real robes. Most of them were also wearing mail shirts that gleamed at the necks of their tunics and showed between belt and hose.
"'Tis the command post of an army!" Gilbert exclaimed, staring.
"And judging from the quality of the clothing, this is the high command," I agreed. "it looks a lot like the other room."
"'Tis in the queen's castle," Brother Ignatius breathed. Gilbert frowned. "How is this? Knights and lords, scribbling on parchments?
"It's called centralized command," I said. "They put their orders in writing, and couriers run them to the generals in the field."
"They fear the field will come to them," Gilbert said, "and shortly, or they would not be wearing mail."
I hoped he was right.
A general finished dictating to a clerk, who was scribbling on a parchment. He poured sand on it, dumped the sand, made sure the sheet was dry, and handed it to a courier who headed for the door, slipping it into a pouch as he went-but not quite quickly enough to keep the pool from magnifying it, and we watched it change from "Conscript five male peasants from each village" to "Discharge five male peasants to each village." Then the parchment slipped into the dispatch case and was gone from sight - but even as it did, the scene rippled and changed to a view from up high, showing a long stretch of dirt road with twenty or thirty soldiers ambling along with their pikes over their shoulders, laughing and slapping one another on the back.
"Men released from arms?" Gilbert cried. "in the midst of a war?"
"Seems Queen Suettay made a mistake by turning her commanders into bureaucrats," I said. "She made them vulnerable to the Gremlin - and the Rat Raiser, of course."
"The Rat Raiser! Can this soft-handed clerk best even knights in the field?"
"Not in the field," I corrected him. "Only before they get there."
The scene rippled again and changed to a paneled room with a richly dressed man sitting behind an elevated table on top of a dais. Before him stood a bruised man in rags and chains, flanked by two well-fed men in green and brown.
"Foresters," Gilbert breathed, "and a county magistrate."
"A courtroom?" I asked.
"A knight's court, mayhap," he said, "though a simple knight can scarcely be termed to hold court."
"Well, it certainly is serving the purpose." I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor peasant in front of the bench. "What did this guy do, to deserve being arrested?"
"The two men to either side of him are forest keepers," Frisson said. "I warrant the peasant was caught a-poaching." He sounded as if he spoke from experience.
I caught my breath. I'd always thought the medieval forest laws were unfair, even though I had to admit the game laws of my own day and age made no sense. Still, making sure deer and pheasants aren't hunted to extinction was a far cry from making sure they were reserved only for the aristocracy's tables and amusement.
This time, however, justice seemed to be adhering to the spirit rather than the letter; the knight was gesturing, and the foresters stared, aghast. The knight pounded on the table, getting red in the face, and the foresters reluctantly turned to strike off the peasant's irons. He stood, dumbstruck, staring at his reddened but naked wrists; then a forester gave him a shove toward the door. He stumbled, but turned the stumble into a run and got out of there before the knight could change his mind.
The knight, for his part, was still red-faced, only now he was glowering at a parchment that lay beside him on his high table.
"The Rat Raiser again!" I grinned. "He told the Gremlin how to louse up the judicial system - from Suettay's standpoint, anyway."
"Aye." Frisson smiled. "Merely dispense actual justice." The scene rippled again, and we found ourselves looking down from overhead at two long battle lines stretched out across a meadow, facing each other. At the head of each rode a man in armor, with a whole squadron of silver lobsters behind him on heavy-duty Percherons.
" 'Tis the duke of Degmaburg!" Gilbert cried. "I know his arms!"
"Only a duke?" I frowned. "Not a minister of some sort?"
"Nay. He was too strong to depose, though not to corrupt. He is one of the few of the old nobility who has held his station under the sorcerers' reigns."
"And now he sees his chance to reestablish the old line," I breathed, "meaning himself."
Even as I said it, the duke's horse began to canter forward. His squad of heavy armor heaved into a trot right behind him, and the peasantry leveled their pikes and began to move forward. But Gilbert was frowning. "How is this? The queen's knights are far behind the line of men-at-arms! What can they do there"' He was about to find out-for just before the duke and his knights struck, the peasant line opened up like a gate, and the horsemen hurtled through. Suettay's armored division snapped their lances down and tried to work up to a quick trot-apparently they hadn't planned on having to fight. But the duke and his men were going too fast to stop; they slammed into the royal knights, unhorsing a few, then dropping their lances and grabbing for maces and broadswords. It turned into a melee after that, with the knights chopping one another to filings.